histofthought1

488 Economic thought before Adam Smiththeory, and he had no immediately effective reply. It took Godwin all of twodecades to study the problem thoroughly and come to an effective refutationof his nemesis. In On Population (1820), Godwin came to the cogent andsensible conclusion that population growth is not a bogey, because over thedecades the food supply would increase and the birth rate would fall. Scienceand technology, along with rational limitation of birth, would solve the problem.Unfortunately, Godwin's timing could not have been worse. By 1820, theaging Godwin - along with utopianism and even the French Revolution - hadbeen forgotten in Great Britain. His excellent rebuttal went unread and unsung,while Malthus continued to tower over all as the much admired finalword on the population question.His Essay being world-famous, and Godwin and Condorcet as he believedeffectively disposed of, Malthus now decided to spend some years actuallystudying the population problem. Remarkably, Malthus's second edition ofthe Essay in 1803 (on which all five future editions were based) was a verydifferent work. In fact, Malthus's Essay is one of the rare works in the historyof economic thought whose second edition in effect totally contradicted thefirst.The second edition incorporated the fruits of Malthus's study on populationthrough his travels in Europe. Filled with copious statistics, the newedition was fully three times the size of the first. But that was the least of thechanges. For whereas in the first edition the 'preventive check' was minorand hopeless, as well as a generally 'vicious' possibility for solution, Malthusnow acknowledged that another negative, or preventive check, one that entailedneither vice nor misery, was a real possibility for ameliorating or evensuspending the eternal pressure of population upon the food supply. This was'moral restraint', i.e. chastity and restraint from early marriage, which wasmoral and not 'vicious' because it involved neither birth control nor otherforms of 'irregular gratification' or 'improper acts'. Indeed, for Malthus,'moral restraint' now became the 'most powerful' check on population ofthem all, more powerful even than vice or the misery and starvation of thepreviously dominant 'positive check' .As a result, human beings were no longer viewed as the puppets of inexorableand gloomy forces, which could now be overcome by moral restraint andmoral education. In the first edition, indeed, Malthus stood opposed to anygrowth of leisure or luxury in society, for such increasing ease would eliminatethe extreme pressure needed to awaken naturally slothful man into workinghard and maintaining maximum production. But now, his view had changed.Now, Malthus realized that if the poor were to acquire the qualities of themiddle class, and hence a 'taste for the conveniences and comforts of life', theywould be more likely to exercise the moral restraint necessary to maintain that